The 85th Academy Award Winners Animated Perspective
Whilst we Brits slept soundly in our beds, over in the magical land of Hollywood people were being questioned about their clothes incessantly and given air kisses and being called “sweetie” a lot. It was of course the Oscars or to give them their proper title the 85th Academy Awards.
After much build up and quite a spectacular year for our beloved art form of animation the list of nominees seemed to have a favourite for everyone, the range available in animation on both technique and the storytelling make the categories of Best Animated Feature and Best Animated Short stand out artistically and technically. Whilst the buzz of the limelight kept the coverage squarely on the red carpet event just out of the camera glare was a demonstration held by nearly 500 visual effects artists protesting against bad work hours and low, sometimes nonexistent wages paid by the multi million dollar blockbusters in the hope of gaining recognition for their struggle in the light of VFX house Rhythm & Hues filing for bankruptcy earlier this month. One film benefitting from the work of said studio was Life of Pi which was awarded the Academy Award for Visual Effects to Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott. With the biggest night of the year now passed for film and arguably the biggest stage for protest used up it will be interesting to see how VFX artists fare in the upcoming months. Hopefully hardworking artists will have generated enough momentum to achieve some of their individual goals and perhaps the mid speech cut during the VFX acceptance speech with add further fuel for recovery and make the appeal more visual.
Animated shorts are a favourite on Skwigly we have no shame in admitting that the variety displayed throughout the year has been a joy to behold. The Academy whittled down the years selection to 5 short films which gave a healthy enough, but by no means perfect cross section of this years film. Romance and magic added paper planes to the traditional love story in John Kahrs Paperman, familiar faces made the leap from one note jokes in TV shows to lead stars in POW style short comedies as David Silverman cast Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare. Master of inginuoty PES prepared us a stop motion morsel with Fresh Guacamole and the UK was represented by the trusty N.F.T.S with Tim Reckarts topsy turvy tale of togetherness with Head Over Heels. Finally Minkyu Lee created a film that tugged on the heartstrings of animators as the gorgeous layouts and world class animation told a parallel tale to the first story ever told as mans best friend took centre stage in Adam and Dog. In the end John Kahrs took home the award for Best Animated Short for Paperman. You can see our interview with John Kahrs and producer Kristina Reed here.
Feature fans were presented with five original tales to take delight in. Pixar presented their pictish princess in Brave directed by Branda Chapman and Mark Andrews, British duo Sam Fell and Chris Butler introduced us to the zombie battling ParaNorman and Tim Burton kept things spooky but also heartwarming with one of his most personal films to date Frankenweenie. Disney stepped things up with one of their most original features in years with Rich Moores Wreck-it Ralph and UK animation legend Peter Lord seduced the screen with a stack of seafaring silliness with Sony and Aardmans The Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists. It was Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews who took away the Oscar in the end as Brave won the Academy Award for Best Feature Animation. This was Pixars 7th win for feature and will sit alongside the BAFTA and the Golden Globe they were awarded earlier in the year.
What did you make of the choices and the winners of this years Academy Awards? We would love to hear from you in the comments section below.